Richard Malim, a retired lawyer who serves as secretary of the De Vere Society in the United Kingdom, takes up the matter from a rather unique perspective, that is, he transports us to a much grander (and more important) view than usual. Having carried around Malim’s book and dipping into it for a few weeks by now, I can tell you it’s not only rich with significant details but propelled by a Big Idea that’s been sorely missing from the debate over who wrote the “Shakespeare” works. In short, he shows how a single man, once identified as Oxford-Shakespeare and placed in his proper historical context, was the primary force behind the great revolution of English literature and drama during the Elizabethan age.

Here’s how he begins:

“In April 1576, the twenty-six-year-old Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), returned from his journey to Italy, then the cultural center of Europe. His journey is the most important in terms of world literary development. This book investigates and establishes the basis for that claim, and reveals the link between his literary career and the changes in the forms and status of English literature and language. It shows him as the real writer of the Shakespeare canon and much more…”

If Oxford wrote the “Shakespeare” works, then he first used that pen name in 1593 at age forty-three, having worked to bring about the “revolution” for roughly three decades – during his teen years in the 1560’s and then during his twenties and thirties in the 1570’s and 1580’s. Scholars laboring under the myth that “Shakespeare” was the man from Stratford-upon-Avon have had to assume that the sudden appearance of the glorious works was a miracle, a miraculous event unrelated to any significant prior history. Wrong!

This book shows not only how very wrong that view has been, but, as well, it fills in the gaps until we have a clear view of what really happened.